Centuries of Sin : Book IV

38 (Bonus Chapter)

This chapter is the epilogue of my prequel to this series, but I thought it was worth sharing here as well. It explains some things that are important about Elizabeth's dad, and it explains why Francesca helped Klara. It's written from Francesca's point of view and it's set immediately after Marlene died.

Elizabeth still wasn't talking to her mother by the time she died, so I went to Marlene's house to see if there was anything that might be worth taking for her.

I had never spoken to Marlene before; I had no interest in approaching a human woman with no good reason for it, and she had no idea who I even was.

It was easy enough to find her home, and her neighbors assumed I was a solicitor, or the executor of her will, so I didn't attract any attention.

I was really only there to look for anything that might be useful, but I did find it interesting to see Elizabeth's childhood home and I spent some time walking through the place before I actually looked for things.

She had a lot of pictures of Elizabeth, and it looked like she'd had a happy childhood. Elizabeth had never talked much about her upbringing, but she'd always given the impression that she had been unhappy as a child and the pictures of her smiling on the walls of her childhood home made me think of her a little differently.

I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, but I went through each room methodically and I eventually found something of interest in the office.

Everything had been left neatly and in a logical order, and it seemed as though Marlene had spent a great deal of time making sure the place was easy to sort through for whoever ended up clearing the place out.

There was a binder on the desk and I saw immediately that there were a couple of letters on top of it, so I went to see who they were for - Marlene didn't know where Elizabeth was living, but I did, and I went over to read what the letter said so I could decide whether to pass it on to her.

I was surprised when I saw the letter wasn't addressed to Elizabeth, and even more surprised that it was addressed to Daniel Eisen.

I had suspected that he was Elizabeth's father for a while, but the letter was confirmation and I was amazed that someone like Daniel had given a human his real name; it made me think he may actually have cared for Elizabeth's mother, at least on some level.

The envelope was unsealed, so I slipped the neatly folded pages out to read.

I sat there in the office of a woman I'd never met, reading a letter that wasn't for me, and it made me feel far more than I had anticipated.

Daniel was dead. He had died a long time ago, but Marlene didn't know that, and so this letter was written to him, for him, and she had left it among her things because she had no way of getting it to him.

My eyes flickered over the lines of neatly handwritten script on the first page a second time; it had been written in German, and I couldn't understand everything, but I could understand enough that I knew Marlene hadn't mentioned anything about my kind, and I saw my brother's name more than once.

The second page was, mercifully, written in English.

It was in Marlene's elegant handwriting, and it may not have been addressed directly to me, but it was clearly meant for a wolf to find and I felt a strange sense of respect for this woman I had never even spoken to; she had known that someone would come to her house after she died, and that a letter addressed to an Alpha would prove far too tempting to leave unread.

Please ensure this reaches Elizabeth's father. He once told me that the fact he considered me his wife for a while would make a difference to people in your world; I don't know how true that is, but perhaps it will mean you are more inclined to help her. Elizabeth is different - she is like her father, not like me. She deserves to be acknowledged by him - she shouldn't have to be alone.

It was only a few lines, but they were enough to make me understand just how much Daniel had cared for Elizabeth's mother, and it was also enough to make me understand that she loved her daughter a great deal.

The word 'wife' had been written with a subtle emphasis that made it clear that was not the word that Daniel had used. He had been mated to Elizabeth's mother and gone to the effort or making sure she knew that was something that would hold significance to other wolves.

She was an intelligent enough woman that she had comprehended and respected what it would mean to our kind to know that she had been mated to Daniel, and she had known that someone would come into her home and find the letter which showed that she understood how our world worked far more than I had given her credit for.

I found it deeply moving that she had wanted Daniel to know about Elizabeth, and that she was trying to make sure her daughter found someone to help her understand who she really was, but I was bothered by the fact she had mentioned my brother in the letter to Daniel, and I wanted to know exactly what she had been trying to tell him.

There was a photograph attached with a paperclip to this page - the one that had been written in English - and I carefully pulled the old polaroid photo loose to examine it.

It was a picture of Marlene and a wolf, presumably Daniel, and it was clear that they had been happy together. It was eerie to see when Elizabeth looked so similar to her mother, and I turned it over in my hands to find it had a bright yellow post-it stuck to the back with Marlene's familiar handwriting penning a note in a slightly shakier hand.

Elizabeth needs to see this.

I exhaled a dry laugh aloud - Elizabeth had needed to see this a very long time ago.

It would have saved a lot of people a lot of pain if Marlene had just been honest with her daughter about her heritage.

I slipped the photograph into the binder, which was filled with documents that were practical rather than personal, and then folded the letter for Daniel up neatly and slid it back into the envelope along with the one for me.

I wasn't going to send that letter to anybody until I knew exactly what it said, but I didn't think it would be a bad thing if Elizabeth had some contact with her relatives, and I knew that Daniel had one surviving family member - a niece who was a couple of years younger than me and my brother.

With the exception of removing the letter and leaving the photograph somewhere Elizabeth was likely to find it, I didn't disturb anything in the house.

I didn't want anybody to know that I had been there - whether the letter for Daniel contained anything negative about my family or not didn't matter: my brother and his mate despised me, and they would never believe I wasn't trying to do something nefarious.

I went home and read the letter; it was short and concise, but it seemed to be... a sort of love letter, in many ways.

She wanted Daniel to know that he was right about his daughter - that she took after him - which could only be interpreted one way when she looked exactly like Marlene.

She wanted him to help Elizabeth; to make sure she was safe in our world, and that she was not in any danger because of her relationship with my brother.

She didn't seem to understand that the connection her daughter had with my brother was more than just being his mate - it was something that transcended romance and which very few were lucky enough to experience.

It wasn't something that could be broken, and they belonged to each other; but Marlene was worried that my brother would abandon Elizabeth and leave her alone and vulnerable.

It hurt to read that - the bond my brother shared with Elizabeth had cost him everything, and this woman had died thinking he might abandon her.

In the end I decided to get in touch with Daniel's niece, and to send her this letter so that she knew she had a relative.

I don't know whether Daniel would have been willing to accept Elizabeth if he had still been alive to read it, but the scant evidence I had seen made me think he would at least have considered it, and... Marlene had still been in love with this man after all these years, so he may have felt something for her, too.

I read the letter through again - I had only translated the thing with the aid of my cell phone, but I felt like I understood it now and I almost regretted reading such a deeply personal message from one dead lover to another.

She hadn't even known whether Daniel was dead or alive, but she had needed to let him know that she never felt the same way about anybody else, and that she didn't regret the time they spent together.

She wished he could have been involved in Elizabeth's life, and I felt a flash of anger when I thought back to that photograph because they had been happy together, the way Elizabeth was happy with my brother, and it felt so deeply unfair that people who loved each other couldn't just be together.

I folded the letter away again, and slipped it back into the envelope with Daniel's name on it before writing a letter to his niece.

I made it clear that she should contact me, and me alone.

As far as our kind were concerned, Elizabeth and my brother were dead now - the last thing I wanted was a letter stating anything contrary to that falling into the wrong hands.

I don't know why I still felt like helping them was the right thing to do when they were never going to speak to me again, and they were never going to forgive me for what they saw as a betrayal, but... I did feel like I should help them, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I could use this connection with Elizabeth's cousin to make a difference for them somehow.

They needed allies, and this girl... as far as I was aware, she was still living alone in the decaying old Packhouse she had been raised in.

She was exactly the sort of person who would be open to supporting them, despite the fact Elizabeth was only half wolf.

It was a few days before I heard back from Elizabeth's cousin, but I got a phone call from her and she didn't seem to believe that I would want to talk to her.

She was shocked to hear that Daniel had a daughter, let alone a half human girl, and I assumed she was suspicious of what my motives for telling her were, until I realized just how long she had been living alone.

It may not have been much, but I was able to set her up with somewhere to live and a way to make money and I wished I could have done more for her without drawing attention to the wrong things and risking people finding out that Elizabeth and my brother were still alive.

I just wanted to help.... to help Daniel's niece, and Elizabeth, and my brother...

I wanted to keep them safe.